1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to a display device, and more particularly, to an on-screen display (OSD) device to support a proportional font and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a user operates a display device using a current time set up, time recording and cancellation, and a channel change through each OSD function. The display device combines and displays OSD information corresponding to the respective OSD functions with an image signal on a blue-back screen, which is convenient for the user and provides easy recognition of a mode change (channel change or input change).
Generally, a display device mainly uses graphic fonts and character-based fonts to display the OSD information. When using the character-based fonts, regardless of a size of a character, the display device displays the OSD information with an identical font size, and when using the graphic fonts, the display device displays high quality OSD information.
FIG. 1 is an example of an OSD string phrase displayed using conventional character-based fonts.
Referring to FIG. 1, each character can be displayed using only one font within a 12 pixel×18 pixel area, which corresponds to a font storing unit.
FIG. 2 is an example of an OSD including the string phrase shown in FIG. 1.
However, when a character-based font is used in the OSD as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, a large number of characters cannot be displayed in OSD regions, thereby sufficient information can not be provided to the user. On the contrary, when graphic-based fonts are used, a large memory must be used to accommodate a large amount of data.